Tomorrow, or rather later today since it's already Friday, there is a smoky-drinky. It's occurred to me that it's been some time since I hosted one of these events, but what the hell. The local smoky-drinky has sort of settled into one guy's house. I wonder if that's how pubs started?
He hasn't started brewing his own beer yet but there have been noises made about that possibility. Naturally he can't charge for it because that would constitute a 'business' and that would mean we can't smoke in there but we'd all chip in for the equipment and the kits and all help out with the brewing. I've done it from raw ingredients in the past and it's better than any kit - although by 'raw' I mean I did buy pre-malted barley and dried hops. Not quite first principles.
At the moment smoky-drinky is mainly a whisky event but as Prohibition spreads out from York, that might change things. Assuming it manages to break the natural barrier in Glasgow, that is.
The leisure industry and CAMRA will not stop the Puritans because they are still addicted to smoker-hating and have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the idea that anything but the smoking ban is causing the pubs to close. In the comments at the Curmudgeonly Bar, the blame for closing pubs is actually laid at the feet of the smokers. Pubs are closing because we smokers stopped going to places that didn't want our custom. Because we didn't want to freeze to death in an exposed 'shelter' you'd be jailed for keeping a pig in. It's currently -6C outside. Is it so surprising that I'm not planning on visiting the pub?
It's not some kind of 'smoker attack on pubs'. I haven't been inside a cinema or a restaurant since the ban came in and soon stopped using cafes too. It's not relaxing to be made unwelcome, so why on Earth would I pay extra for it? I drink my tea and coffee at home too, and bought an espresso machine a few years back as a direct result of the smoking ban. It's a Gaggia Cubika and it's excellent.
No, smokers did not 'crawl into the gutter and whisper disquiet'. We made alternative arrangements. Some now buy all their tobacco abroad, some from Man with a Van, some of us are even trying our hands at growing the stuff. We set up our own smoky-drinkies which cannot be clubs because that would invoke the smoking ban. They cannot be open to the general public because that would invoke the ban. No business can be conducted there because that would invoke the ban. We meet up, smoke, drink and talk just as we used to in the pub, and nobody is forced to go outside. So no, we don't need sympathy, we don't need pity, we don't care what the antismokers think and we don't need the pubs.
If the ban was repealed we are not likely to rush back to the pubs (if there are any left by then), but it's probable we would trickle back. We do, after all, quite like pubs. We didn't 'desert' them, we were thrown out.
However, if the day comes that we have a Government with a spine, and the insane eugenics-driven agenda is at last cast aside, all those smoky-drinkies will be ready to open for business. Probably as ale-houses first of all, offering home-brewed beers for pennies a pint. Which is where the pubs started.
It has been suggested that we all stop smoking so we can go to pubs again but a smoke and a drink go together for us. You might as well suggest we wear ear muffs in the cinema or only eat half of whatever we are served in a restaurant. A drink without a smoke is half the experience and yet you want us to pay extra for it?
It has been suggested that smokers should fight the ban by determinedly lighting up in pubs, but that would get us jail time and get the pub fined into bankruptcy. How does that help support the pubs? Besides, it would most likely be a CAMRA member who reported us and who caused the closure of that pub. We have no allies. Fat people sneer at us, people who like salt on their chips sneer at us, people who like sugar in their tea sneer at us, none of them can look past their smoker-hate to see the same thing coming their way even when it's already arrived. They'll just have to deal with denormalisation on their own. We have, and we're doing okay, thanks. You want help when the eugenics juggernaut hits you? No. We are non-persons and you antismokers did that to us. Find your own ways to cope.
Even the tobacco companies are no use at all. They are only now waking up to what 'plain packaging' actually means, when they could have been supporting their customers from the beginning. Screw the tobacco companies. They don't care about their customers. They only react when their profits are threatened. Tobacco grows in Scotland even in these inexpert hands so it'll grow almost anywhere.
I'm still planning to 'lose' some seeds this year but that won't work too early because of frost. I'm considering 'dropping' a few established plants into holes that 'just appeared' in waste ground to give them a better start. Further south, where the frost window closes earlier, wild tobacco is a real possibility. Here there is a saying 'Ne'er cast a clout till May is out' - which roughly translated means that anything planted outside before the end of May is likely to freeze to death.
Wild tobacco in Scotland is not likely to do that well. Since I have enough seed to plant half of Scotland I'm going to try anyway. If I visit Wales this year I'll be suggesting we take a drive over those empty, wild mountains.
So no, anonymous commenter, we did not 'crawl into the gutter and whisper disquiet'. We have been active, we just haven't bothered to tell anyone what we've been up to.
Why would we, when nobody listens to us anyway?
Friday, 3 February 2012
Thursday, 2 February 2012
Sugar, the new Death Dust.
Sugar is toxic now. Only refined sugar, of course. Sugar in plants is okay, it's only the White Powder of Death that will kill you.
This does sound somewhat familiar. Where have I heard this magical transformation before? Oh yes. Nicotine in tobacco is deadly but nicotine in patches and gum (at far higher concentrations) is good for you.
It. Is. Exactly. The. Bloody. Same.
Sugar is extracted from sugar cane, usually. It's a natural product. It's only bad for you if you eat far too much of it. When I was about seven I had a fixation on sugar sandwiches. Yes, that image in your head is right. Two slices of bread and butter (white bread and real butter) with a layer of sugar in between.
I wasn't fat and while I have a bit of an overbelt bulge now, I'm still not fat. 'Fat' was the kid at school whose arse hung over both sides of the seat. I fit easily into seats. Anyway, I went off those sandwiches when I discovered rhubarb and blackcurrant sandwiches, with sugar of course, and could never eat one now. Tastes change and kids will eat stuff that horrifies adults. Speaking for myself, that was probably the main reason.
Oh, but sugar is actually toxic. Yes, the stuff your brain runs on is poisoning you.
Writing in Nature, experts from the University of California San Francisco say that sugar does far more harm than simply expanding waistlines, and at the level consumed by most Americans it changes metabolism, raises blood pressure and damages the liver.
Nature? Nature? NATURE? The journal that regards itself as the pinnacle of science? The journal that published a paper saying it was a good thing to produce nitrous oxide in the mouth because it killed bacteria (and nobody mentioned pernicious anaemia)? The journal that published 'memory of water'? That hack-rag?
Oh, but it's in Nature so it must be right. It comes from California so it can't be utterly deranged. These people are Experts.
They have white coats and everything. For the record, my lab coats are green. The reason is simple. When I ordered them, it had not occurred to me that they might come in different colours. If only I had known. I could have had some black ones with stars and moons all over them, and a pointy hat.
Liver damage is the Great Thing of the moment. We had a bout of pancreas ailments after Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer but we're back to liver damage now. Don't try dodging it by opting for sugar-free, that gets you just the same. Something is damaging livers and someone is looking to shift the blame. It will be affecting non-boozers too and that means someone might work out what's really doing it.
As I said, these Californian hippie scientists with beards full of cannabis dog-ends and sandals on their stinky feet and lab coats with flowers on them are Experts, man. Look how clever they are.
The health hazards mirror those of alcohol - which they point out is made from distilling sugar.
Experts indeed. This is the real truth behind 'Experts'. This is how much they really know. They believe you distil sugar to make alcohol, whereas anyone who's ever made any knows that the best stuff has almost no sugar left in it at all and that's before you go anywhere near distillation, which would in any case remove any residual sugar from the finished product. I repeat, these are Experts. These are the people the drongos we elected are listening to because those we elected are even dimmer.
I propose a simple solution. Anyone who expresses any interest in standing for any Government post should be sectioned and incarcerated forever. They are evidently insane.
So, what techniques can we expect to see applied to this new Deadly Thing?
Dr Brindis said that the public needed to be better informed about the dangers of sugar with a wide approach similar to that seen with tobacco and alcohol.
Yep. The same one again.All those who supported the tobacco control template are responsible for every vicious control imposed on everything else because it is the same game, every time. Do they see it yet?
Nope. In the comments -
Tooth decay, obesity, diabetes and hence, hardening of the arteries, candiasis, hypoglycemia, headaches and irritability. It is also known that cancer cells thrive in the presence of sugar. As in the now old book,'The Sugar Blues' it is a shame the white evil was ever discovered. - karen, tonbridge, 1/2/2012 21:38
Sigh. Candidiasis is as likely to be caused by sugar as middle ear infections are likely to be caused by second hand smoke. They are infections, in this case caused by a yeast called Candida (I know, people call their kids that now, it cracks me up every time because it's also the yeast that causes thrush) and cannot be spontaneously generated by sugar.
Tooth decay and obesity are not caused by sugar, but by too much sugar. Hypoglycaemia is caused by too little sugar in the bloodstream, not by too much.
All body cells thrive in the presence of sugar. It's what they use for energy unless you are on the Atkins diet in which case your cells burn protein and your breath smells like acetone. Get some bloody sugar in there.
Note that it is now 'the white evil'. I bet Tate and Lyle will soon be accused of funding the BNP too.In fact, I might drop that suggestion in front of one of the nutters myself..
Maybe this one -
I've been reading literature on how bad sugar is for you for 20 years, something that a lot of friends just don't want to believe....I must admit that this one will be hard to give up and I'm sure the sugar industry won't go down without a fight. And, by the way a lot of sweeteners are not that good for you either.. - Brigitte, Somewhere in Oz, 1/2/2012 23:09
Australia, eh? Once home to the hardest people on the planet, fast becoming the centre of the feeblest. Yes, it's all about Big Sugar, people, and 'friends don't want to believe' that the hyped up nonsense she tells them about is true.
When I first started out as a mere PhD student, I remember a discussion with another student after we had both published papers. The gist of it was 'It looks so much more credible in print'. It does. All those hungover days of mindlessly running samples through automated machinery, and when it was in print we looked like we had some idea what we were doing. No we didn't. We thought we did but we were students. Not qualified yet.
So Brigitte has 'read literature'. I can produce 'literature' on UFO's, telepathy and reincarnation. Not in magazines but in journals. I could dig up those papers published in Nature on the memory of water, 'make yourself anaemic but with good teeth', or cold fusion. Just because it's in print doesn't mean it's true.
I have, so far -
Thirty-one refereed papers.
Three review articles.
Thirty-five conference proceedings.
Fifteen book chapters, technical notes and popular articles.
Thirty-two abstracts of conference presentations.
ight invited lectures.
Over thirty confidential reports to industrial sponsors.
Does that make me an expert? I don't think so. The number of papers published says nothing of their quality. There are a host of newspaper articles on the science application of farming too. Internal reports I never bothered to list. So what? I could still be wrong.
That's the real nature of science. There might be someone starting a Ph. D. now who will, in ten or twenty years, prove that everything I said was wrong because he or she has access to better, more precise equipment.Science used to recognise that. It doesn't any more. The collective memory is gone. Just as the newspapers go into a frenzy when half an inch of snow falls in January, science no longer remembers what it had for breakfast.
Oh, I also have -
Jessica’s Trap, a novel, by H. K. Hillman. Publishedby Eternal Press, April 2011.
Fears of the Old and the New, by H. K. Hillman – A collection of previously published short stories.
Dark Thoughts and Demons, by H. K. Hillman – A collection of short stories
Ghosthunting for the Sensible Investigator, by Romulus Crowe (two editions)
Nineteen short stories published since July 2003. (17 are in Fears of the Old and the New)
Forty-six articles on horror-writing between November 2003 and July 2010.
These are also in print. Does that make them true? Of course not, they are entirely made up apart from the demons who are all real. Oh I should have said - don't read the spells aloud. I didn't make up magic like JKR, I nicked it all from Crowley. They probably don't work but I don't want to be sued from Hell because they have all the lawyers.
Most of these ideas came out of a bottle. None of your cheap bottles mind, they came out of good single-malts because that's where the 'wake up screaming then write it down' dreams come from.
So you want to believe stuff in print that scares you, Brigitte? I have stuff in print that's designed to scare you. Just like the University of California (Welcome to the Uni California is gestating in my whisky-fuelled brain. Yours runs on sugar, mine runs on four-star. Don't put sugar in my tank) I can make up stuff to scare people for fun and profit.
It was inevitable and most smokers knew it. We were just the start. Can you imagine any government passing up the chance of a new tax escalator? Salt and sugar were on the long list from the beginning. So was meat. The smoking ban was a test run and they won. They proved that politicians are idiots but we all knew that anyway.
So now, the food your brain requires is toxic. Just as the fats it requires to insulate nerves are now deadly..
This year I might plant sugar-beet too.
This does sound somewhat familiar. Where have I heard this magical transformation before? Oh yes. Nicotine in tobacco is deadly but nicotine in patches and gum (at far higher concentrations) is good for you.
It. Is. Exactly. The. Bloody. Same.
Sugar is extracted from sugar cane, usually. It's a natural product. It's only bad for you if you eat far too much of it. When I was about seven I had a fixation on sugar sandwiches. Yes, that image in your head is right. Two slices of bread and butter (white bread and real butter) with a layer of sugar in between.
I wasn't fat and while I have a bit of an overbelt bulge now, I'm still not fat. 'Fat' was the kid at school whose arse hung over both sides of the seat. I fit easily into seats. Anyway, I went off those sandwiches when I discovered rhubarb and blackcurrant sandwiches, with sugar of course, and could never eat one now. Tastes change and kids will eat stuff that horrifies adults. Speaking for myself, that was probably the main reason.
Oh, but sugar is actually toxic. Yes, the stuff your brain runs on is poisoning you.
Writing in Nature, experts from the University of California San Francisco say that sugar does far more harm than simply expanding waistlines, and at the level consumed by most Americans it changes metabolism, raises blood pressure and damages the liver.
Nature? Nature? NATURE? The journal that regards itself as the pinnacle of science? The journal that published a paper saying it was a good thing to produce nitrous oxide in the mouth because it killed bacteria (and nobody mentioned pernicious anaemia)? The journal that published 'memory of water'? That hack-rag?
Oh, but it's in Nature so it must be right. It comes from California so it can't be utterly deranged. These people are Experts.
They have white coats and everything. For the record, my lab coats are green. The reason is simple. When I ordered them, it had not occurred to me that they might come in different colours. If only I had known. I could have had some black ones with stars and moons all over them, and a pointy hat.
Liver damage is the Great Thing of the moment. We had a bout of pancreas ailments after Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer but we're back to liver damage now. Don't try dodging it by opting for sugar-free, that gets you just the same. Something is damaging livers and someone is looking to shift the blame. It will be affecting non-boozers too and that means someone might work out what's really doing it.
As I said, these Californian hippie scientists with beards full of cannabis dog-ends and sandals on their stinky feet and lab coats with flowers on them are Experts, man. Look how clever they are.
The health hazards mirror those of alcohol - which they point out is made from distilling sugar.
Experts indeed. This is the real truth behind 'Experts'. This is how much they really know. They believe you distil sugar to make alcohol, whereas anyone who's ever made any knows that the best stuff has almost no sugar left in it at all and that's before you go anywhere near distillation, which would in any case remove any residual sugar from the finished product. I repeat, these are Experts. These are the people the drongos we elected are listening to because those we elected are even dimmer.
I propose a simple solution. Anyone who expresses any interest in standing for any Government post should be sectioned and incarcerated forever. They are evidently insane.
So, what techniques can we expect to see applied to this new Deadly Thing?
Dr Brindis said that the public needed to be better informed about the dangers of sugar with a wide approach similar to that seen with tobacco and alcohol.
Yep. The same one again.All those who supported the tobacco control template are responsible for every vicious control imposed on everything else because it is the same game, every time. Do they see it yet?
Nope. In the comments -
Tooth decay, obesity, diabetes and hence, hardening of the arteries, candiasis, hypoglycemia, headaches and irritability. It is also known that cancer cells thrive in the presence of sugar. As in the now old book,'The Sugar Blues' it is a shame the white evil was ever discovered. - karen, tonbridge, 1/2/2012 21:38
Sigh. Candidiasis is as likely to be caused by sugar as middle ear infections are likely to be caused by second hand smoke. They are infections, in this case caused by a yeast called Candida (I know, people call their kids that now, it cracks me up every time because it's also the yeast that causes thrush) and cannot be spontaneously generated by sugar.
Tooth decay and obesity are not caused by sugar, but by too much sugar. Hypoglycaemia is caused by too little sugar in the bloodstream, not by too much.
All body cells thrive in the presence of sugar. It's what they use for energy unless you are on the Atkins diet in which case your cells burn protein and your breath smells like acetone. Get some bloody sugar in there.
Note that it is now 'the white evil'. I bet Tate and Lyle will soon be accused of funding the BNP too.In fact, I might drop that suggestion in front of one of the nutters myself..
Maybe this one -
I've been reading literature on how bad sugar is for you for 20 years, something that a lot of friends just don't want to believe....I must admit that this one will be hard to give up and I'm sure the sugar industry won't go down without a fight. And, by the way a lot of sweeteners are not that good for you either.. - Brigitte, Somewhere in Oz, 1/2/2012 23:09
Australia, eh? Once home to the hardest people on the planet, fast becoming the centre of the feeblest. Yes, it's all about Big Sugar, people, and 'friends don't want to believe' that the hyped up nonsense she tells them about is true.
When I first started out as a mere PhD student, I remember a discussion with another student after we had both published papers. The gist of it was 'It looks so much more credible in print'. It does. All those hungover days of mindlessly running samples through automated machinery, and when it was in print we looked like we had some idea what we were doing. No we didn't. We thought we did but we were students. Not qualified yet.
So Brigitte has 'read literature'. I can produce 'literature' on UFO's, telepathy and reincarnation. Not in magazines but in journals. I could dig up those papers published in Nature on the memory of water, 'make yourself anaemic but with good teeth', or cold fusion. Just because it's in print doesn't mean it's true.
I have, so far -
Thirty-one refereed papers.
Three review articles.
Thirty-five conference proceedings.
Fifteen book chapters, technical notes and popular articles.
Thirty-two abstracts of conference presentations.
ight invited lectures.
Over thirty confidential reports to industrial sponsors.
Does that make me an expert? I don't think so. The number of papers published says nothing of their quality. There are a host of newspaper articles on the science application of farming too. Internal reports I never bothered to list. So what? I could still be wrong.
That's the real nature of science. There might be someone starting a Ph. D. now who will, in ten or twenty years, prove that everything I said was wrong because he or she has access to better, more precise equipment.Science used to recognise that. It doesn't any more. The collective memory is gone. Just as the newspapers go into a frenzy when half an inch of snow falls in January, science no longer remembers what it had for breakfast.
Oh, I also have -
Jessica’s Trap, a novel, by H. K. Hillman. Publishedby Eternal Press, April 2011.
Fears of the Old and the New, by H. K. Hillman – A collection of previously published short stories.
Dark Thoughts and Demons, by H. K. Hillman – A collection of short stories
Ghosthunting for the Sensible Investigator, by Romulus Crowe (two editions)
Nineteen short stories published since July 2003. (17 are in Fears of the Old and the New)
Forty-six articles on horror-writing between November 2003 and July 2010.
These are also in print. Does that make them true? Of course not, they are entirely made up apart from the demons who are all real. Oh I should have said - don't read the spells aloud. I didn't make up magic like JKR, I nicked it all from Crowley. They probably don't work but I don't want to be sued from Hell because they have all the lawyers.
Most of these ideas came out of a bottle. None of your cheap bottles mind, they came out of good single-malts because that's where the 'wake up screaming then write it down' dreams come from.
So you want to believe stuff in print that scares you, Brigitte? I have stuff in print that's designed to scare you. Just like the University of California (Welcome to the Uni California is gestating in my whisky-fuelled brain. Yours runs on sugar, mine runs on four-star. Don't put sugar in my tank) I can make up stuff to scare people for fun and profit.
It was inevitable and most smokers knew it. We were just the start. Can you imagine any government passing up the chance of a new tax escalator? Salt and sugar were on the long list from the beginning. So was meat. The smoking ban was a test run and they won. They proved that politicians are idiots but we all knew that anyway.
So now, the food your brain requires is toxic. Just as the fats it requires to insulate nerves are now deadly..
This year I might plant sugar-beet too.
The youth of today, eh?
I recall no teaching of any kind of finance at school. But then I didn't do 'home economics' which in those days translated as 'cooking'. Boys who did that in the seventies were branded 'poof' so we all did woodwork and metalwork instead. Manly things involved saws, not spatulas.
Now I have a cooker I use every day, woodworking tools I use reasonably often, perhaps monthly on average, and have not seen a proper forge since 1976. I do have a small anvil but can only work metal cold. Looking back, learning about cooking would have been much more practical than learning how to use a shaper, a lathe or a plane. I did make a very nice ship's cannon in steel with an aluminium base though. It was so good my mother won't give it back. I think my father still uses the pointing trowel I made. So it wasn't all a total waste.
I can also make neat housing and mortice and tenon joints (never managed dovetails) but none of this touched at all on the costs. Only on the finished products. School taught us a lot of practical skills but never made any mention of what we should charge for using them. It is not just about woodwork and metalwork.
I did well in English, well enough to become a published author. The ghost of that teacher is satisfied now. I won an essay competition at school which gave me a goodly pile of record tokens (I bought Kraftwerk's early mad stuff). So if someone wants writing done, what do I charge? It was never mentioned
School taught me how to do many things but never mentioned any means of making a living at any of them. Yes, I can turn a cannon barrel or a table leg on a lathe. I can take a rough casting and shine it on a shaper. I can temper a chisel end or anneal a steel rod but what are those things worth? School never mentioned worth. School never once said 'You know how much you can make if you're skilled at this?' If you look back with a cynical eye, school taught us the value of everything and the price of nothing.
That's hindsight. We all have it. It's no use at all. It does not help us pay tomorrow's bills.
I learned about finance the hard way. When you borrow, they want more back than they gave you and they want it at a rate that can leave you utterly skint. No, it wasn't taught in school but it was common sense and in my early twenties I didn't have much of that. Neither did the early-twenties in any generation before me, so it's hardly fair to expect it of the few generations that come after me. We all learned the hard way apart from the few who watched us learn the hard way and were sensible enough not to follow us into the gutter.
It is not surprising, then, to find that the early-twenties in modern generations are pretty much the same as those of earlier generations.
When I was twenty-something, the thought of 'pension' went along with the thought of being wrinkly, being unable to down two gallons of beer and go to work the next day, being slow and cautious and easily broken, saying things like 'I was in the war' and 'I'm eighty-six, you know' and stinking of cats and pee. Now I'm fifty, have no cats and a well-trained bladder, can't take the volume of beer I used to but all that bladder practice paid off. Now, pension is something that matters.
Now, I am glad that those pension contributions were forcibly deducted from my salary because when I was younger I would never have paid them voluntarily. Normally I am very much against anything forcible but let's be realistic here. Through my twenties and thirties and indeed most of my forties, if you had said 'pension' I would have regarded it as something to worry about later. If those pension contributions had not been deducted at source I would not have paid in. Few would.
There is a pension waiting for me and okay, the contributions were taken without my consent. In true anarchy they would not be and I'd have to keep working until I died. That part of government is one of the few sensible parts and compulsory though it is, it is considerably cheaper than income tax. The government costs you much more than your old age pension contributions. You pay far more to keep them in comfort now than to keep you in comfort later. Makes you think, doesn't it?
It's no wonder the young don't want to think about it.
Now I have a cooker I use every day, woodworking tools I use reasonably often, perhaps monthly on average, and have not seen a proper forge since 1976. I do have a small anvil but can only work metal cold. Looking back, learning about cooking would have been much more practical than learning how to use a shaper, a lathe or a plane. I did make a very nice ship's cannon in steel with an aluminium base though. It was so good my mother won't give it back. I think my father still uses the pointing trowel I made. So it wasn't all a total waste.
I can also make neat housing and mortice and tenon joints (never managed dovetails) but none of this touched at all on the costs. Only on the finished products. School taught us a lot of practical skills but never made any mention of what we should charge for using them. It is not just about woodwork and metalwork.
I did well in English, well enough to become a published author. The ghost of that teacher is satisfied now. I won an essay competition at school which gave me a goodly pile of record tokens (I bought Kraftwerk's early mad stuff). So if someone wants writing done, what do I charge? It was never mentioned
School taught me how to do many things but never mentioned any means of making a living at any of them. Yes, I can turn a cannon barrel or a table leg on a lathe. I can take a rough casting and shine it on a shaper. I can temper a chisel end or anneal a steel rod but what are those things worth? School never mentioned worth. School never once said 'You know how much you can make if you're skilled at this?' If you look back with a cynical eye, school taught us the value of everything and the price of nothing.
That's hindsight. We all have it. It's no use at all. It does not help us pay tomorrow's bills.
I learned about finance the hard way. When you borrow, they want more back than they gave you and they want it at a rate that can leave you utterly skint. No, it wasn't taught in school but it was common sense and in my early twenties I didn't have much of that. Neither did the early-twenties in any generation before me, so it's hardly fair to expect it of the few generations that come after me. We all learned the hard way apart from the few who watched us learn the hard way and were sensible enough not to follow us into the gutter.
It is not surprising, then, to find that the early-twenties in modern generations are pretty much the same as those of earlier generations.
When I was twenty-something, the thought of 'pension' went along with the thought of being wrinkly, being unable to down two gallons of beer and go to work the next day, being slow and cautious and easily broken, saying things like 'I was in the war' and 'I'm eighty-six, you know' and stinking of cats and pee. Now I'm fifty, have no cats and a well-trained bladder, can't take the volume of beer I used to but all that bladder practice paid off. Now, pension is something that matters.
Now, I am glad that those pension contributions were forcibly deducted from my salary because when I was younger I would never have paid them voluntarily. Normally I am very much against anything forcible but let's be realistic here. Through my twenties and thirties and indeed most of my forties, if you had said 'pension' I would have regarded it as something to worry about later. If those pension contributions had not been deducted at source I would not have paid in. Few would.
There is a pension waiting for me and okay, the contributions were taken without my consent. In true anarchy they would not be and I'd have to keep working until I died. That part of government is one of the few sensible parts and compulsory though it is, it is considerably cheaper than income tax. The government costs you much more than your old age pension contributions. You pay far more to keep them in comfort now than to keep you in comfort later. Makes you think, doesn't it?
It's no wonder the young don't want to think about it.
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Sink my boats.
'Liberty', an American civil war clipper and yes, I did lash those ropes to proper belay pins and put them through little wooden pulley blocks. With two pairs or tweezers and a lot of swearing.
Clicking should enlargify, if you think it's worth it.
I like boats. I don't like being on them very much, but I do like the shape, the intricacies, the detail. Bobbing about on water is not for me. Boats in general, I like.These days I prefer to make models of sailing ships in wood. One tip - in the photo above, those sail stitchings are not drawn on. I thought it might be a good idea to use real stitching. By the time I finished this model I had sworn never to do that again. I am, however, now fairly proficient with a sewing machine and still have most of my fingers.
In the past, a long time ago when model paint was far less than £100 a litre (10-ml pots are now over £1, get thee to the car-paint shop for much cheaper sprays and touch-up tins!) and models actually did come at pocket-money prices, I built warships. Kids like that sort of thing. Guns and lots of them. I built HMS Hood which suffered from a lucky shot by German gunners. If they hadn't hit the magazine it might now be a floating museum somewhere. It still makes a very nice model.
There was HMS Nelson. Three triple-gun turrets and all in the front. Big, big guns. Lots of other guns too in decreasing sizes and correspondingly increasing number all over the superstructure.
An aircraft carrier - can't remember the name but the model came from Airfix if that jogs anyone's memory - involved placing lots of tiny planes, including biplanes, with opened and with folded wings. Those planes weren't in one piece either. There were lifts in the deck that could be set to up or down (if I had it now I'd try to make them work). Big ships. Impressive ships. Sleek and scary ships. 'Don't piss-me-off' ships. Ships that could throw several tons of ordnance at an enemy every minute.
Ships that could have some guns targeting aircraft, some targeting small boats, some targeting destroyers, depth charges to throw at subs, some guns beating off other battleships and still have guns left over to pound the fire-power on the shoreline.A floating death machine that could sail right over the P&O ferry and fail to notice.
We don't have those any more. We have specialist ships now. They do one thing exceptionally well but they don't do much else.
In a fleet, that's no problem. You'd have fast destroyers and maybe even MTB's dodging and weaving at the smaller enemy while keeping the enemy's fast-and-small attack boats away from the lumbering battleship or the big target of the aircraft carrier.
It is evident that the Cameroid was not exposed to childhood model making and even the trivial technical learning that derived from it. He probably made the butler do it. His latest Great Idea is to send a really good Navy boat to the Falklands. It is an impressive ship, to be sure, but it's a specialist.
Speaking as someone who hates to be on or in water, as someone who could never be in any way part of the navy or of any part of the military, if Argentina put me in charge of their plans to take over the Falklands, I would say:
"Ground the planes. Send the ships and subs it can't fight and when it's sunk, then we send the planes."
The military thinkers of Argentina have until the end of March to work this out. Cameroid thinks they won't. I, with no military past or experience beyond primitive teenage wargaming, worked it out in seconds. So has pretty much everybody else, whether they shot .22 pellets at models full of match heads or not.
Cameroid is the one who was voted to be in charge of the country. Well, almost. Many millions didn't vote for the Socialist Tory party but they scraped in anyway with a little help from nobody's friends.
Now they send a floating anti-aircraft battery to fight a naval war.
It's people like this who caused Noah to build an Ark.
Oh well. My favourite limping lyricist has a song for every occasion.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Taxing times.
The tax is done for another year. This must be how sheep feel on the way back from the shearing house. Fleeced.
I didn't leave it to the very last day but it was close. There have been noises from the tax office about all we terrible people who wait until the last possible moment, as if that's not entirely their own fault.
Firstly, they will charge a penalty plus interest if I pay late. There is nothing at all in it for me if I pay early.
Secondly, and this is the big one, they also want next year's tax this year. They call it 'tax on account' and while it is possible for me to reduce those payments on account, it has to be done carefully.
Reduce them too much and I'd get fined. Yes, really, they would fine me for not paying tax I don't actually owe yet. If I leave them too high, then I'm seriously out of pocket at least until the next tax return.
So I need to make a reliable projection of what I'm likely to earn in the next tax year, which ends in April. If I did this in July I'd have to project the likely income for ten months. If I do it at the end of January I only have to guess what I might make in February and March. If it wasn't for tax-on-account I'd be able to fill out the form on 6th April every year. The money still wouldn't be due until the following January but the form would be done. Under the current rules, only an idiot would do that.
As it is, I will make absolutely bugger all in the next two months. Even if I get a contract tomorrow, it can't be completed, reported, billed and paid before April. Well - it won't be, put it that way, or I'd get fined for not paying tax I don't owe on income I haven't had yet.
Books can't give me a surprise boost. Even if they suddenly sell like hot cakes I won't see a return for three months. Nothing significant will come from there before April either. If that did happen I would simply buy in stock before April to make that projected tax liability match what I said it was.
Apparently some tens of thousands of small businesses will be filing returns on the very last day. I am not surprised. There is no benefit in completing the form early and getting that future-tax liability wrong can be expensive. If you earn more than you said you would, then rather than just saying 'thanks' for the extra tax, the taxman will treat you as a criminal. So you either stop bothering or you buy in stock you don't really need to make the taxman's figures add up.
I'm still looking for a job. Today I saw a microbiology job, really it's a technician job but it's easy, pays well enough and is close. It's also a one-year contract which is ideal. When you're over fifty, nobody wants you because you're just getting into the job and it's retirement time. I can't blame them - if you're going to the trouble of training someone, then someone who will stay for 20 years is a better investment than someone who will only have 10 left in them.
This, plus all the pension stuff, doesn't apply on a short contract. So I'm not at a disadvantage compared to a younger applicant. I also need no training, in fact I've been training people to do the same kind of job.
I don't want another career so that's also useful. I just need to ride out the recession until everyone else has made enough money to afford my expensive services again. If I could, I'd sleep through it.
There's still the submissions-editor job. Last I heard, they had whittled it down to the last few candidates and as I haven't had the 'get lost' letter yet, there is still hope. That's all online, so I can do that as well.
None of this will prevent me having to fill out another form next year. Even the small amount the books make will have to be accounted for, the editor job counts as freelance and if I do get a contract I'll do it at night and at weekends. I'm also looking for writing work, so if you know anyone who wants some advertising copy, I am entirely without morals or scruples and will spin your product to the stars. Especially if it's something the Righteous disapprove of.
There is, nonetheless, one big attraction in going back to being an employee rather than trying to build a business..
They don't have to pay tax in advance.
I didn't leave it to the very last day but it was close. There have been noises from the tax office about all we terrible people who wait until the last possible moment, as if that's not entirely their own fault.
Firstly, they will charge a penalty plus interest if I pay late. There is nothing at all in it for me if I pay early.
Secondly, and this is the big one, they also want next year's tax this year. They call it 'tax on account' and while it is possible for me to reduce those payments on account, it has to be done carefully.
Reduce them too much and I'd get fined. Yes, really, they would fine me for not paying tax I don't actually owe yet. If I leave them too high, then I'm seriously out of pocket at least until the next tax return.
So I need to make a reliable projection of what I'm likely to earn in the next tax year, which ends in April. If I did this in July I'd have to project the likely income for ten months. If I do it at the end of January I only have to guess what I might make in February and March. If it wasn't for tax-on-account I'd be able to fill out the form on 6th April every year. The money still wouldn't be due until the following January but the form would be done. Under the current rules, only an idiot would do that.
As it is, I will make absolutely bugger all in the next two months. Even if I get a contract tomorrow, it can't be completed, reported, billed and paid before April. Well - it won't be, put it that way, or I'd get fined for not paying tax I don't owe on income I haven't had yet.
Books can't give me a surprise boost. Even if they suddenly sell like hot cakes I won't see a return for three months. Nothing significant will come from there before April either. If that did happen I would simply buy in stock before April to make that projected tax liability match what I said it was.
Apparently some tens of thousands of small businesses will be filing returns on the very last day. I am not surprised. There is no benefit in completing the form early and getting that future-tax liability wrong can be expensive. If you earn more than you said you would, then rather than just saying 'thanks' for the extra tax, the taxman will treat you as a criminal. So you either stop bothering or you buy in stock you don't really need to make the taxman's figures add up.
I'm still looking for a job. Today I saw a microbiology job, really it's a technician job but it's easy, pays well enough and is close. It's also a one-year contract which is ideal. When you're over fifty, nobody wants you because you're just getting into the job and it's retirement time. I can't blame them - if you're going to the trouble of training someone, then someone who will stay for 20 years is a better investment than someone who will only have 10 left in them.
This, plus all the pension stuff, doesn't apply on a short contract. So I'm not at a disadvantage compared to a younger applicant. I also need no training, in fact I've been training people to do the same kind of job.
I don't want another career so that's also useful. I just need to ride out the recession until everyone else has made enough money to afford my expensive services again. If I could, I'd sleep through it.
There's still the submissions-editor job. Last I heard, they had whittled it down to the last few candidates and as I haven't had the 'get lost' letter yet, there is still hope. That's all online, so I can do that as well.
None of this will prevent me having to fill out another form next year. Even the small amount the books make will have to be accounted for, the editor job counts as freelance and if I do get a contract I'll do it at night and at weekends. I'm also looking for writing work, so if you know anyone who wants some advertising copy, I am entirely without morals or scruples and will spin your product to the stars. Especially if it's something the Righteous disapprove of.
There is, nonetheless, one big attraction in going back to being an employee rather than trying to build a business..
They don't have to pay tax in advance.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Entertainment - when a story writes itself.
I was distracted. I had a short story all ready to go, cover all made and everything. Yet something wasn't right. I kept looking back at it. Then I noticed.
It wasn't a short story at all. It was a Chapter One. So the short story won't appear because it is now something much longer. It's going to take time to finish but not very much because this one is writing itself. It's kept me away from the newspaper websites all day - which is good for my health - but it won't let me sleep. So, since I have no idea what's in the news today so have nothing to rage about, here is the original short story.
Channelling
“Suckers!”
Robert Odin kissed the cheque before pocketing it. It was a lot of money for one night's work. Well, why not? He worked hard for his money. He had to pay his accomplices, his anonymous assistants who mingled with the audience before every show, gleaning information that he could relay back to the punters later on stage.
They fell for it every time. They really believed he was communicating with their dead relatives, receiving messages from the other side. All he had to do was remember what his assistants had put on his crib sheets and which sucker each sheet related to. Finding them in the audience was never difficult. Tickets and seats were numbered and the number was on the sheet. Robert had no need of psychic powers. All he needed was a good memory.
Leaving the theatre, he met the ever-present crowd of admirers at the stage door. Wide-eyed and expectant, they asked him, as usual, to autograph copies of one of his books, which he was always pleased to do. He rebuffed their requests for communication with dead parents or spouses with one of his stock excuses. He was tired, it had been a difficult evening, the spirits were quiet now. As always, his gaping admirers accepted this without question and he climbed into his waiting limousine with his usual suppressed grin at their credulity.
“Back to the hotel, Wallace.” Robert settled into the comfortable seat and closed his eyes as the car pulled out into the late evening traffic. Tomorrow he would bank the cheque before preparing for another show.
***
“Alice. I have someone called Alice here.” Robert glanced at Bethany and Julie, his assistants, who watched from the wings, and gave a barely perceptible shrug. He had goofed. There was no Alice on any of his crib sheets for the night, but the name had left his lips before he could stop it.
“Alice. Does anyone here recognise the name?” He had to go with it now, try to bluff it out. If he was lucky, none of the audience would know an Alice and he could move along to the last name on his list. Robert made a show of looking to his left as though addressing an invisible entity. “Sorry, Alice, there's nobody here who knows you.” A nervous laugh drifted through the crowd.
“Nobody for Alice Dunkeld.” Robert smiled up at his audience. The last name on his list was William Brown. He paused for a moment, wondering why he had given the fictional Alice a surname, then his eyes widened when a hand shot up, near the front of the audience.
Robert ran his fingers over the buttons of his waistcoat, following the curve of his well-fed stomach. He fingered his watch chain. In the wings, Bethany had turned away. Julie rubbed her hands together, her face pale. Robert stepped towards the audience member. He had no choice but to try cold reading, something he hadn’t done for years.
The audience member was a woman, elderly, so she was probably looking for a sister, maybe her mother. Robert started with his stock question.
“Alice is telling me she’s related to you. Is that right?”
The woman nodded. A tear formed in her eye. “She’s my—”
“Daughter.” Robert tensed the muscles in his right arm to stop his hand flying over his mouth. This woman was ready to give him the answers, yet he had blurted out a guess.
“That’s right.” The woman dabbed at her eye with a lace handkerchief.
“She died of liver failure. It wasn’t AIDS, it was hepatitis. She wants you to know that.” The thoughts, the words, popped into his mind and issued from his mouth before he could stop them. Robert risked a glance at his assistants. Bethany was nowhere to be seen. Julie hung onto one of the stage ropes, her eyes round. Robert swallowed, hard, and turned his attention to the old woman, who wiped at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“Oh, thank God,” she whispered. “The gossip, the rumours have been killing me. She died so far away, you see.”
“In Cambodia, yes. She’s safe now. There’s no pain where she is.” Robert placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder, as much to steady himself as to comfort her. “You have a photo of her in your purse, but she’d cut her hair short.”
“Yes, yes, that’s right.” The woman looked up at Robert, her lined face filled with wonder. She reached into her purse and took out a creased photo, showing a young woman with long blonde hair. “When they flew her body home, her hair was short. I thought they did it to her after her death.”
“No, she cut it because of the heat.” Robert bit into his lip. Behind the woman, several of the audience leaned forward to get a better look at the photograph. Robert barely registered their amazed gasps and mutterings. He was astounded. He had made many lucky guesses in the past, but this was too much. Time to end the show.
“Alice says she loves you, and she’s looking over you. There’s no need to grieve for her, Maureen, she’s perfectly happy.” Robert closed his eyes. Why had he called this woman Maureen? He moved his lips in a silent prayer, hoping she had missed it.
“That’s right. That’s my name. She called me Maureen, not Mother. I always told her it was disrespectful, but she just laughed.” The woman clutched at her purse and stared at the photo.
Robert backed away from the audience. He forced his theatrical smile into place and flashed it for a few moments while he composed himself.
“That’s all we have time for, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for coming along this evening. I hope to see you again soon.” To thunderous applause, Robert half-ran into the curtained wings. He pushed past Julie and made straight for his dressing-room.
Robert had already downed two neat gins and was about to pour his third when Julie threw open the door. Her face burned with rage, her small fists clenched along the seams of her tight jeans. She stormed across the room and stood facing Robert. Behind her, Bethany’s long skirt swished as she followed Julie.
“What the hell was that?” Julie grabbed the bottle before Robert could pour himself another. “Some kind of set-up? You primed that woman before the show, didn’t you? How much did you pay her?”
“Calm down. I got the name wrong. I had to improvise.” Robert reached for the bottle. Julie held it higher. “I did a bit of cold reading. Now will you give me that gin, or do I have to fire you first?”
“That wasn’t a cold reading.” Bethany said. “She didn’t even give you clues. You must have known all that stuff beforehand.”
“No.” Robert retrieved the bottle from Julie. “I’ve never seen that woman before. Besides, even if I had set it up, what’s it to you? Sometimes you two forget who’s paying the wages around here.”
“Oh? How do you think you’re making all this money? By talking to dead people?” Julie folded her arms. “If it weren’t for us pumping the saps for info before the show, there’d be no show. You can’t fire us in case we tell the world.”
Robert poured gin into his glass. This was a familiar argument, one they had fought many times before. He sighed and waited for Julie’s next line.
“We’re a team, Bob, and don’t you forget it. You’re the front man, but only because we put you there. Without us—”
“Okay, okay, I get the point.” Robert took a sip of his gin. “I have no idea what happened out there. I give you my word I didn’t set it up. I screwed up, then I got lucky. That’s all.”
Robert drained his glass, stood and pulled on his overcoat. “I need a holiday. We have two more shows this week, then nothing for the week after. Don’t accept any bookings for that week.” He pulled the door open. “We could all do with a break, I think.” Robert stepped into the corridor.
Behind him, a voice whispered “Thank you.” Robert stared over his shoulder at Julie and Bethany.
“Did you say something?”
“No.” Julie said. She and Bethany exchanged a smirk. “Maybe you do need a holiday.”
***
The following night, Robert broke with tradition and downed a large gin before going on stage. His head pounded, as it had all last night and all day today. He felt as though people were shouting at him, so many, so loud it was all just an incomprehensible roar. Robert accepted the night’s crib sheets from Bethany.
“Is something wrong?” Bethany sounded concerned, and with good reason. All the makeup in the world could not hide Robert’s haggard face. Despite hours in front of his dressing-room mirror, Robert knew he looked as though he hadn’t slept for days.
“Sore head. Might be coming down with the ‘flu or something.” Robert concentrated on the sheets. Normally he could memorise them all, but tonight he would work on just enough for the first half of the show. He would read the rest in the interval.
“We’ve got a good one to start with.” Julie indicated a sheet with the seat number twelve marked in the top left corner. “She’s hoping to meet up with her brother, who was a fireman who died while saving children from an orphanage. That should set up some credibility.”
“Right.” Robert’s lips moved while he read the sheet. The information mingled with the shouting in his head. He drew a breath. If he could remember most of the details he’d be fine. Robert handed the sheets to Bethany and walked onto the stage, his arms held high and his trademark superior smile plastered over his face. The audience burst into applause.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” Robert waited for the applause to stop. “Good evening to all of you here tonight, visible and invisible.” The audience laughed with nervous anticipation. Robert winced at the noise in his head. It pounded against his temples like a storm surge.
“We have someone here with us who’s anxious to get through.” Robert closed his eyes and put his hand to his forehead. He decided to dispense with his usual preamble tonight. The sooner this was over, the better. “He’s directing me over here.” The seat layout was the same as always. Robert raised his arm and pointed to where seat twelve should be. He opened his eyes.
His finger pointed in entirely the wrong direction. In the wings, Bethany closed her eyes. Julie let her head slump forward onto her chest. Robert tried to swing his arm around, as though guided by spirit, but it refused to move. The sounds in his head coalesced and subsided into a murmur, low and threatening.
“Martin Newton.” Robert spoke the name, though he had never heard it before. Where his finger pointed, the colour drained from a dark-haired man’s face.
“That’s my name. How did you know?” Martin Newton stammered the words.
“I have someone for you.” Robert walked without knowing why, towards the man. He lowered his arm. “A message from Joseph Blackthorn.”
“No.” Martin half-rose from his seat, then fell back into it. “It can’t be.”
“He died in a ravine. You spent months in an asylum afterwards, but you recovered. Joseph is angry.” Robert wanted to bite his lip, but the words kept coming. “You killed him.”
The audience whispered and murmured. Martin’s mouth worked, and sweat ran between his eyes. Robert saw visions of lawsuits. Why was he saying these things? Perhaps his headache was more than the ‘flu. Perhaps he was losing his mind.
“I didn’t kill anyone.” Martin surged to his feet. “It was an accident.” He grabbed Robert’s lapels.
Two security guards ran from their places at the exits. Robert raised his hands, palms outwards.
“I can only repeat what the spirits tell me.” His chest heaved with the effort of breathing. “Please, sir, calm down. The spirits are not always right.” That should do it. Whatever this man might try, he could not sue the dead. The next words came out before Robert realised he was speaking.
“Joseph Blackthorn tells me you killed him, and you were also responsible for the death of his wife, Sheila.”
Martin released Robert’s lapels. The security guards each took one of Martin’s arms.
“How?” Martin stared into Robert’s eyes. Robert sucked his teeth.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. Robert stood motionless while the guards led Martin away. The hubbub of the audience filtered through the sounds in his head. That steady buzz, overlaid with mutterings and shouts, wordless noises that were nonetheless definitely voices, surged again.
The audience burst into applause. Robert clutched his head. It’s good business. Wherever it came from, it’s a good show. They’ll talk about it for weeks. Robert clung to his thoughts, but the voices shouted him down. If only Julie and Bethany would come and lead him away. They dare not, he knew. If they were recognised, the game would be up. Robert faced his audience and tried to smile.
There was a blonde girl in the third row. Mary Parker. My daughter. I have to speak with her. Robert shifted his gaze to an old man in the fifth row. Sam Torrance. My brother. A middle-aged woman at the front. Pat, my wife Pat. He knew them all. Any face, any age, sparked one or more of the voices in his head. They jostled within him, calling and pushing themselves forward. Robert closed his eyes.
“Shut up! All of you, shut up.”
The audience fell silent. Robert opened his eyes. They stared at him, every one, some shocked, some indignant, others shaking their heads in disapproval. The voices roared on.
There’s my mother. Brother. Aunt. Within Robert’s head, the crowds gathered. They saw through his eyes, heard through his ears. His own mind, pushed aside, cowered and gibbered at the onslaught. Trodden under ethereal feet, Robert Odin’s self-assured, easy confidence snapped. His thoughts flew at random into the dark crevices of his skull. The invaders tried to coax them out. Each tried to persuade Robert that their message was important. They had come such a long way. They must be heard.
Robert fell to his knees and covered his head with his hands. Look, look at my son. My father. My sister. The voices forced themselves into him, their pressure threatened to burst his skull. Robert could impose no order, no restriction on them. He had no control.
His scream burst through his clip-on microphone. It deafened the audience, shook the room, and ended the career of Robert Odin, the stage psychic, forever.
______
It was never going to end there, now I look back on it.
The original was around 2500 words. So far it's at 10,000 and still roaring along. A ghost story that writes itself...
Spooky.
It wasn't a short story at all. It was a Chapter One. So the short story won't appear because it is now something much longer. It's going to take time to finish but not very much because this one is writing itself. It's kept me away from the newspaper websites all day - which is good for my health - but it won't let me sleep. So, since I have no idea what's in the news today so have nothing to rage about, here is the original short story.
Channelling
“Suckers!”
Robert Odin kissed the cheque before pocketing it. It was a lot of money for one night's work. Well, why not? He worked hard for his money. He had to pay his accomplices, his anonymous assistants who mingled with the audience before every show, gleaning information that he could relay back to the punters later on stage.
They fell for it every time. They really believed he was communicating with their dead relatives, receiving messages from the other side. All he had to do was remember what his assistants had put on his crib sheets and which sucker each sheet related to. Finding them in the audience was never difficult. Tickets and seats were numbered and the number was on the sheet. Robert had no need of psychic powers. All he needed was a good memory.
Leaving the theatre, he met the ever-present crowd of admirers at the stage door. Wide-eyed and expectant, they asked him, as usual, to autograph copies of one of his books, which he was always pleased to do. He rebuffed their requests for communication with dead parents or spouses with one of his stock excuses. He was tired, it had been a difficult evening, the spirits were quiet now. As always, his gaping admirers accepted this without question and he climbed into his waiting limousine with his usual suppressed grin at their credulity.
“Back to the hotel, Wallace.” Robert settled into the comfortable seat and closed his eyes as the car pulled out into the late evening traffic. Tomorrow he would bank the cheque before preparing for another show.
***
“Alice. I have someone called Alice here.” Robert glanced at Bethany and Julie, his assistants, who watched from the wings, and gave a barely perceptible shrug. He had goofed. There was no Alice on any of his crib sheets for the night, but the name had left his lips before he could stop it.
“Alice. Does anyone here recognise the name?” He had to go with it now, try to bluff it out. If he was lucky, none of the audience would know an Alice and he could move along to the last name on his list. Robert made a show of looking to his left as though addressing an invisible entity. “Sorry, Alice, there's nobody here who knows you.” A nervous laugh drifted through the crowd.
“Nobody for Alice Dunkeld.” Robert smiled up at his audience. The last name on his list was William Brown. He paused for a moment, wondering why he had given the fictional Alice a surname, then his eyes widened when a hand shot up, near the front of the audience.
Robert ran his fingers over the buttons of his waistcoat, following the curve of his well-fed stomach. He fingered his watch chain. In the wings, Bethany had turned away. Julie rubbed her hands together, her face pale. Robert stepped towards the audience member. He had no choice but to try cold reading, something he hadn’t done for years.
The audience member was a woman, elderly, so she was probably looking for a sister, maybe her mother. Robert started with his stock question.
“Alice is telling me she’s related to you. Is that right?”
The woman nodded. A tear formed in her eye. “She’s my—”
“Daughter.” Robert tensed the muscles in his right arm to stop his hand flying over his mouth. This woman was ready to give him the answers, yet he had blurted out a guess.
“That’s right.” The woman dabbed at her eye with a lace handkerchief.
“She died of liver failure. It wasn’t AIDS, it was hepatitis. She wants you to know that.” The thoughts, the words, popped into his mind and issued from his mouth before he could stop them. Robert risked a glance at his assistants. Bethany was nowhere to be seen. Julie hung onto one of the stage ropes, her eyes round. Robert swallowed, hard, and turned his attention to the old woman, who wiped at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“Oh, thank God,” she whispered. “The gossip, the rumours have been killing me. She died so far away, you see.”
“In Cambodia, yes. She’s safe now. There’s no pain where she is.” Robert placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder, as much to steady himself as to comfort her. “You have a photo of her in your purse, but she’d cut her hair short.”
“Yes, yes, that’s right.” The woman looked up at Robert, her lined face filled with wonder. She reached into her purse and took out a creased photo, showing a young woman with long blonde hair. “When they flew her body home, her hair was short. I thought they did it to her after her death.”
“No, she cut it because of the heat.” Robert bit into his lip. Behind the woman, several of the audience leaned forward to get a better look at the photograph. Robert barely registered their amazed gasps and mutterings. He was astounded. He had made many lucky guesses in the past, but this was too much. Time to end the show.
“Alice says she loves you, and she’s looking over you. There’s no need to grieve for her, Maureen, she’s perfectly happy.” Robert closed his eyes. Why had he called this woman Maureen? He moved his lips in a silent prayer, hoping she had missed it.
“That’s right. That’s my name. She called me Maureen, not Mother. I always told her it was disrespectful, but she just laughed.” The woman clutched at her purse and stared at the photo.
Robert backed away from the audience. He forced his theatrical smile into place and flashed it for a few moments while he composed himself.
“That’s all we have time for, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for coming along this evening. I hope to see you again soon.” To thunderous applause, Robert half-ran into the curtained wings. He pushed past Julie and made straight for his dressing-room.
Robert had already downed two neat gins and was about to pour his third when Julie threw open the door. Her face burned with rage, her small fists clenched along the seams of her tight jeans. She stormed across the room and stood facing Robert. Behind her, Bethany’s long skirt swished as she followed Julie.
“What the hell was that?” Julie grabbed the bottle before Robert could pour himself another. “Some kind of set-up? You primed that woman before the show, didn’t you? How much did you pay her?”
“Calm down. I got the name wrong. I had to improvise.” Robert reached for the bottle. Julie held it higher. “I did a bit of cold reading. Now will you give me that gin, or do I have to fire you first?”
“That wasn’t a cold reading.” Bethany said. “She didn’t even give you clues. You must have known all that stuff beforehand.”
“No.” Robert retrieved the bottle from Julie. “I’ve never seen that woman before. Besides, even if I had set it up, what’s it to you? Sometimes you two forget who’s paying the wages around here.”
“Oh? How do you think you’re making all this money? By talking to dead people?” Julie folded her arms. “If it weren’t for us pumping the saps for info before the show, there’d be no show. You can’t fire us in case we tell the world.”
Robert poured gin into his glass. This was a familiar argument, one they had fought many times before. He sighed and waited for Julie’s next line.
“We’re a team, Bob, and don’t you forget it. You’re the front man, but only because we put you there. Without us—”
“Okay, okay, I get the point.” Robert took a sip of his gin. “I have no idea what happened out there. I give you my word I didn’t set it up. I screwed up, then I got lucky. That’s all.”
Robert drained his glass, stood and pulled on his overcoat. “I need a holiday. We have two more shows this week, then nothing for the week after. Don’t accept any bookings for that week.” He pulled the door open. “We could all do with a break, I think.” Robert stepped into the corridor.
Behind him, a voice whispered “Thank you.” Robert stared over his shoulder at Julie and Bethany.
“Did you say something?”
“No.” Julie said. She and Bethany exchanged a smirk. “Maybe you do need a holiday.”
***
The following night, Robert broke with tradition and downed a large gin before going on stage. His head pounded, as it had all last night and all day today. He felt as though people were shouting at him, so many, so loud it was all just an incomprehensible roar. Robert accepted the night’s crib sheets from Bethany.
“Is something wrong?” Bethany sounded concerned, and with good reason. All the makeup in the world could not hide Robert’s haggard face. Despite hours in front of his dressing-room mirror, Robert knew he looked as though he hadn’t slept for days.
“Sore head. Might be coming down with the ‘flu or something.” Robert concentrated on the sheets. Normally he could memorise them all, but tonight he would work on just enough for the first half of the show. He would read the rest in the interval.
“We’ve got a good one to start with.” Julie indicated a sheet with the seat number twelve marked in the top left corner. “She’s hoping to meet up with her brother, who was a fireman who died while saving children from an orphanage. That should set up some credibility.”
“Right.” Robert’s lips moved while he read the sheet. The information mingled with the shouting in his head. He drew a breath. If he could remember most of the details he’d be fine. Robert handed the sheets to Bethany and walked onto the stage, his arms held high and his trademark superior smile plastered over his face. The audience burst into applause.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” Robert waited for the applause to stop. “Good evening to all of you here tonight, visible and invisible.” The audience laughed with nervous anticipation. Robert winced at the noise in his head. It pounded against his temples like a storm surge.
“We have someone here with us who’s anxious to get through.” Robert closed his eyes and put his hand to his forehead. He decided to dispense with his usual preamble tonight. The sooner this was over, the better. “He’s directing me over here.” The seat layout was the same as always. Robert raised his arm and pointed to where seat twelve should be. He opened his eyes.
His finger pointed in entirely the wrong direction. In the wings, Bethany closed her eyes. Julie let her head slump forward onto her chest. Robert tried to swing his arm around, as though guided by spirit, but it refused to move. The sounds in his head coalesced and subsided into a murmur, low and threatening.
“Martin Newton.” Robert spoke the name, though he had never heard it before. Where his finger pointed, the colour drained from a dark-haired man’s face.
“That’s my name. How did you know?” Martin Newton stammered the words.
“I have someone for you.” Robert walked without knowing why, towards the man. He lowered his arm. “A message from Joseph Blackthorn.”
“No.” Martin half-rose from his seat, then fell back into it. “It can’t be.”
“He died in a ravine. You spent months in an asylum afterwards, but you recovered. Joseph is angry.” Robert wanted to bite his lip, but the words kept coming. “You killed him.”
The audience whispered and murmured. Martin’s mouth worked, and sweat ran between his eyes. Robert saw visions of lawsuits. Why was he saying these things? Perhaps his headache was more than the ‘flu. Perhaps he was losing his mind.
“I didn’t kill anyone.” Martin surged to his feet. “It was an accident.” He grabbed Robert’s lapels.
Two security guards ran from their places at the exits. Robert raised his hands, palms outwards.
“I can only repeat what the spirits tell me.” His chest heaved with the effort of breathing. “Please, sir, calm down. The spirits are not always right.” That should do it. Whatever this man might try, he could not sue the dead. The next words came out before Robert realised he was speaking.
“Joseph Blackthorn tells me you killed him, and you were also responsible for the death of his wife, Sheila.”
Martin released Robert’s lapels. The security guards each took one of Martin’s arms.
“How?” Martin stared into Robert’s eyes. Robert sucked his teeth.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. Robert stood motionless while the guards led Martin away. The hubbub of the audience filtered through the sounds in his head. That steady buzz, overlaid with mutterings and shouts, wordless noises that were nonetheless definitely voices, surged again.
The audience burst into applause. Robert clutched his head. It’s good business. Wherever it came from, it’s a good show. They’ll talk about it for weeks. Robert clung to his thoughts, but the voices shouted him down. If only Julie and Bethany would come and lead him away. They dare not, he knew. If they were recognised, the game would be up. Robert faced his audience and tried to smile.
There was a blonde girl in the third row. Mary Parker. My daughter. I have to speak with her. Robert shifted his gaze to an old man in the fifth row. Sam Torrance. My brother. A middle-aged woman at the front. Pat, my wife Pat. He knew them all. Any face, any age, sparked one or more of the voices in his head. They jostled within him, calling and pushing themselves forward. Robert closed his eyes.
“Shut up! All of you, shut up.”
The audience fell silent. Robert opened his eyes. They stared at him, every one, some shocked, some indignant, others shaking their heads in disapproval. The voices roared on.
There’s my mother. Brother. Aunt. Within Robert’s head, the crowds gathered. They saw through his eyes, heard through his ears. His own mind, pushed aside, cowered and gibbered at the onslaught. Trodden under ethereal feet, Robert Odin’s self-assured, easy confidence snapped. His thoughts flew at random into the dark crevices of his skull. The invaders tried to coax them out. Each tried to persuade Robert that their message was important. They had come such a long way. They must be heard.
Robert fell to his knees and covered his head with his hands. Look, look at my son. My father. My sister. The voices forced themselves into him, their pressure threatened to burst his skull. Robert could impose no order, no restriction on them. He had no control.
His scream burst through his clip-on microphone. It deafened the audience, shook the room, and ended the career of Robert Odin, the stage psychic, forever.
______
It was never going to end there, now I look back on it.
The original was around 2500 words. So far it's at 10,000 and still roaring along. A ghost story that writes itself...
Spooky.
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Taxed to death.
The Ranting Penguin notes that the taxman is going to chase all we little people for our pennies while letting the big corporations keep their pounds.
The taxman believes that the use of cash is, in itself, a tax dodge. One more step to the cashless world, in which every transaction is taxed electronically and we don't know how much tax we're paying any more.
So who are the culprits here? Not me, because the nature of my work does not allow for cash transactions. If someone wanted cash-in-hand microbiology work I'd be very wary indeed. The books, I could sell for cash, but in reality they're sold through booksellers. Sometimes I sell a signed copy but that's by cheque or PayPal. I can't make cash sales unless I try selling door-to-door!
Who, then, are the taxman targeting this time?
Paying a builder or cleaner in cash, allowing them to evade VAT or income tax, will result in even deeper government cuts to public services, he says.
Cleaner? I've been looking at cleaner jobs and if a cleaner is even making enough to pass the tax threshold, I'd be amazed. You don't see many cleaners turning up for work in BMWs. So the taxman is going after minimum-wage earners while letting the big corporations off with billions. Paying a cleaner with cash doesn't matter at all. The tax loss is trivial, if there even is any.
Builders might make enough to show a difference but I suspect that if you took all the cash-in-hand work done by all the builders in the country, the tax loss wouldn't even touch the amounts those big businesses have been allowed to forget about.
I have a tax bill that's going to clean me out and yet it wouldn't cover an MP's monthly expenses. If I didn't pay it, there would be no cuts to services at all because it won't cover a single employee's wages. And yet this is the level the taxman is planning to attack with fines that will blow most small businesses right out of the water and put all those taxpaying workers on the dole.
Many small business owners are giving up and going back into waged employment because the government is doing its damnedest to destroy them. The array of fines a business can now face is astounding and those include fines for things that aren't even illegal. Such as not putting a sale in the ledger until the following day. There is no tax dodge there, all the money is accounted for, but if you don't fill it in in 'real time' they'll fine you £3000.
Then we have 'tax on account' where we have to pay next year's tax this year. If you are thinking of starting a business, be aware that at the end of your first year you will pay double tax. Then the tax office will report that most small businesses only last one year and will never make the connection.
Eventually we will all be working for a big corporation or we will be on benefits. There will be no small businesses and no more innovation. Corporations will stick to their tried and trusted sales, only upgrading current products and not bothering to develop anything new. Why take risks when there's no competition?
If Steve Jobs was a teenager today, building little computers in his garage, nobody would ever see an iPhone. The taxman would have eradicated him before he had 'Apple' listed as a trademark.
The taxman believes that the use of cash is, in itself, a tax dodge. One more step to the cashless world, in which every transaction is taxed electronically and we don't know how much tax we're paying any more.
So who are the culprits here? Not me, because the nature of my work does not allow for cash transactions. If someone wanted cash-in-hand microbiology work I'd be very wary indeed. The books, I could sell for cash, but in reality they're sold through booksellers. Sometimes I sell a signed copy but that's by cheque or PayPal. I can't make cash sales unless I try selling door-to-door!
Who, then, are the taxman targeting this time?
Paying a builder or cleaner in cash, allowing them to evade VAT or income tax, will result in even deeper government cuts to public services, he says.
Cleaner? I've been looking at cleaner jobs and if a cleaner is even making enough to pass the tax threshold, I'd be amazed. You don't see many cleaners turning up for work in BMWs. So the taxman is going after minimum-wage earners while letting the big corporations off with billions. Paying a cleaner with cash doesn't matter at all. The tax loss is trivial, if there even is any.
Builders might make enough to show a difference but I suspect that if you took all the cash-in-hand work done by all the builders in the country, the tax loss wouldn't even touch the amounts those big businesses have been allowed to forget about.
I have a tax bill that's going to clean me out and yet it wouldn't cover an MP's monthly expenses. If I didn't pay it, there would be no cuts to services at all because it won't cover a single employee's wages. And yet this is the level the taxman is planning to attack with fines that will blow most small businesses right out of the water and put all those taxpaying workers on the dole.
Many small business owners are giving up and going back into waged employment because the government is doing its damnedest to destroy them. The array of fines a business can now face is astounding and those include fines for things that aren't even illegal. Such as not putting a sale in the ledger until the following day. There is no tax dodge there, all the money is accounted for, but if you don't fill it in in 'real time' they'll fine you £3000.
Then we have 'tax on account' where we have to pay next year's tax this year. If you are thinking of starting a business, be aware that at the end of your first year you will pay double tax. Then the tax office will report that most small businesses only last one year and will never make the connection.
Eventually we will all be working for a big corporation or we will be on benefits. There will be no small businesses and no more innovation. Corporations will stick to their tried and trusted sales, only upgrading current products and not bothering to develop anything new. Why take risks when there's no competition?
If Steve Jobs was a teenager today, building little computers in his garage, nobody would ever see an iPhone. The taxman would have eradicated him before he had 'Apple' listed as a trademark.
Friday, 27 January 2012
Nobodies.
Smoky-Drinky night so no sense here for the evening.
This is looking like a popular Smoky-Drinky anthem...
We dare to know just who we are.
These days, how many can honestly say that?
This is looking like a popular Smoky-Drinky anthem...
We dare to know just who we are.
These days, how many can honestly say that?
The Smoke Wars update.
I hear, via Email, that the appeal to keep Chris Carter out of pokey has passed the halfway mark but is not there yet.
I know, because it affects me too, that January is a bad time to ask for donations. We are all suffering the post-Christmas cash depletion and the taxman is about to rip a dirty great hole in my not-healthy bank account by Tuesday.
However, if anyone has a bean or two spare, please consider this man who is going to go to prison for smoking while those who beat a woman senseless while calling her a 'white bitch' and those dregs from the shallow end of the gene pool who hospitalised a man who asked them if they wouldn't mind not being bin-kicking arseholes are all let off with slaps on the wrist.
If we let this persecution of smokers continue, you will soon have to have a licence to buy alcohol and you will be refused a bag of chips based on your waist size. It is not just about smoking. It never was. It has always been about control. Total control. Of you. Yes, you, not just those you disapprove of.
'Panoptica' is fiction. All it needs to become reality is your continued silence.
I know, because it affects me too, that January is a bad time to ask for donations. We are all suffering the post-Christmas cash depletion and the taxman is about to rip a dirty great hole in my not-healthy bank account by Tuesday.
However, if anyone has a bean or two spare, please consider this man who is going to go to prison for smoking while those who beat a woman senseless while calling her a 'white bitch' and those dregs from the shallow end of the gene pool who hospitalised a man who asked them if they wouldn't mind not being bin-kicking arseholes are all let off with slaps on the wrist.
If we let this persecution of smokers continue, you will soon have to have a licence to buy alcohol and you will be refused a bag of chips based on your waist size. It is not just about smoking. It never was. It has always been about control. Total control. Of you. Yes, you, not just those you disapprove of.
'Panoptica' is fiction. All it needs to become reality is your continued silence.
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Smokers, the new rebel horde.
A long time ago, me and my brother Kyle here
We was hitchhiking down a long and lonesome road.
All of a sudden, there shined a shiny demon
In the middle of the road
And he said:
"Roll the best smoke in the world, or I'll eat your chips".
Oh no wait. I was distracted by YouTube. I'll start again.
Long ago, in the dim and distant past, when I worked for and with the allegedly intelligent (you wouldn't believe how shocked they are by the suggestion that Electrofag with no nicotine is suitable for non-smokers, even if they are vegetarian and like veggie burgers) smoking was only mildly frowned upon.
When I was a PhD student we could, at a pinch, get away with even smoking in the lab. It wasn't a good idea but it was not actually illegal. In fact most of us didn't because putting anything at all in your mouth in a microbiology lab has the risk level of 'mad'. Leave the sandwiches, coffee and smokes to the common room. Still, it wasn't illegal to smoke in the lab and some did.
It was eventually banned and really, in a lab with compressed-gas-cylinders, including hydrogen, and every surface at risk of being coated in some deadly disease, that ban was something nobody could sensibly object to. Nil by mouth is the best way to be in such a lab. A good microbiologist washes their hands before they go to the toilet. And after. During, if it's a long one.
So we smoked in the common room and nobody minded. It was my third post-doc job when smoking was first restricted.
Some objected to smoking. No problem. We smokers took our breaks at different times to avoid the whiners. Coffee break at 10:30? We worked through it and took ours at 11. Not a problem. I would take work into the common room outside break times and smoke while drawing graphs and writing reports. Productivity was not at all affected. Especially since most paper-writing happened outside working hours anyway.
Then came the first silly excuse from the antis. 'Some labs use ether and it's dangerous to smoke in the common room outside coffee breaks in case there's an explosion'. I am not kidding. That really is the reason given for forcing smokers back into 'normal' coffee break times. In that building full of PhD-level people, not one - not one - pointed out that if there is an explosive level of ether in the air in the common room, you really don't want to be the one who turns on the coffee machine. Every one of them agreed with the smoke restrictions, of course.
I moved jobs and was once more able to work in the common room while smoking. Then a no-smoking sign appeared. I enquired and was told it was not official, just put up by a git and could be ignored. Nonetheless it was pointed out to me every time I smoked because There Is A Sign and again, PhD-level people proved themselves to be utterly controllable drones.
It is true to say I have had fun with this realisation in the past. I had someone believing that ammonia-absorbing bacteria in the pig gut were the next Big Thing just by talking in hushed tones in the presence of a known gullible idiot. You haven't heard of this even if you're in biological science because it doesn't really exist but it spectacularly wasted someone's time. He's a professor now, and he still doesn't know what I did yet..I have done worse. If I had been involved in climate science, the horrors I could have perpetrated would have made the current lunacy pale into insignificance.
In my last day-job employment up to 2005, we ended up smoking outside the fire door at the back of the building. Even then we were told by those who took half-hour coffee breaks twice a day that we were 'costing the business' and we should be docked pay. We took no half-hour coffee breaks. Why spend half an hour in the presence of pompous self-righteous gits when you can spend ten minutes with the smokers? We took less actual time off work than those who spent an hour a day complaining about us.
Now the smoker-bashing is mainstream. More and more companies are taking on the idea that smokers must clock off when going for a smoke. The coffee drinkers and Farcebook users are ecstatic.
So when they have to clock off for coffee breaks, they will no doubt be just as delighted. When the IT department logs their use of Farcebook or YouTube or reading this blog and docks their pay accordingly, they will be almost orgasmic. Come on, it's not a hard thing to implement. Leave your work computer on Farcebook all day and you will not get paid for that day even if you were running your guts out elsewhere. Fair? You are asking a smoker about 'fair'? Get real.
Can't happen? Well, take a look at this. Pretend the smoking ban wasn't just the start if you like. Accept control of the minutiae of your life if that's what you want.
But never, never ask the smokers to help you when it's your turn.
We're on our own. So are you.
Antismokers, Apple, CAMRA and the entire leisure industry don't want us to fight for them. So I won't.
We was hitchhiking down a long and lonesome road.
All of a sudden, there shined a shiny demon
In the middle of the road
And he said:
"Roll the best smoke in the world, or I'll eat your chips".
Oh no wait. I was distracted by YouTube. I'll start again.
Long ago, in the dim and distant past, when I worked for and with the allegedly intelligent (you wouldn't believe how shocked they are by the suggestion that Electrofag with no nicotine is suitable for non-smokers, even if they are vegetarian and like veggie burgers) smoking was only mildly frowned upon.
When I was a PhD student we could, at a pinch, get away with even smoking in the lab. It wasn't a good idea but it was not actually illegal. In fact most of us didn't because putting anything at all in your mouth in a microbiology lab has the risk level of 'mad'. Leave the sandwiches, coffee and smokes to the common room. Still, it wasn't illegal to smoke in the lab and some did.
It was eventually banned and really, in a lab with compressed-gas-cylinders, including hydrogen, and every surface at risk of being coated in some deadly disease, that ban was something nobody could sensibly object to. Nil by mouth is the best way to be in such a lab. A good microbiologist washes their hands before they go to the toilet. And after. During, if it's a long one.
So we smoked in the common room and nobody minded. It was my third post-doc job when smoking was first restricted.
Some objected to smoking. No problem. We smokers took our breaks at different times to avoid the whiners. Coffee break at 10:30? We worked through it and took ours at 11. Not a problem. I would take work into the common room outside break times and smoke while drawing graphs and writing reports. Productivity was not at all affected. Especially since most paper-writing happened outside working hours anyway.
Then came the first silly excuse from the antis. 'Some labs use ether and it's dangerous to smoke in the common room outside coffee breaks in case there's an explosion'. I am not kidding. That really is the reason given for forcing smokers back into 'normal' coffee break times. In that building full of PhD-level people, not one - not one - pointed out that if there is an explosive level of ether in the air in the common room, you really don't want to be the one who turns on the coffee machine. Every one of them agreed with the smoke restrictions, of course.
I moved jobs and was once more able to work in the common room while smoking. Then a no-smoking sign appeared. I enquired and was told it was not official, just put up by a git and could be ignored. Nonetheless it was pointed out to me every time I smoked because There Is A Sign and again, PhD-level people proved themselves to be utterly controllable drones.
It is true to say I have had fun with this realisation in the past. I had someone believing that ammonia-absorbing bacteria in the pig gut were the next Big Thing just by talking in hushed tones in the presence of a known gullible idiot. You haven't heard of this even if you're in biological science because it doesn't really exist but it spectacularly wasted someone's time. He's a professor now, and he still doesn't know what I did yet..I have done worse. If I had been involved in climate science, the horrors I could have perpetrated would have made the current lunacy pale into insignificance.
In my last day-job employment up to 2005, we ended up smoking outside the fire door at the back of the building. Even then we were told by those who took half-hour coffee breaks twice a day that we were 'costing the business' and we should be docked pay. We took no half-hour coffee breaks. Why spend half an hour in the presence of pompous self-righteous gits when you can spend ten minutes with the smokers? We took less actual time off work than those who spent an hour a day complaining about us.
Now the smoker-bashing is mainstream. More and more companies are taking on the idea that smokers must clock off when going for a smoke. The coffee drinkers and Farcebook users are ecstatic.
So when they have to clock off for coffee breaks, they will no doubt be just as delighted. When the IT department logs their use of Farcebook or YouTube or reading this blog and docks their pay accordingly, they will be almost orgasmic. Come on, it's not a hard thing to implement. Leave your work computer on Farcebook all day and you will not get paid for that day even if you were running your guts out elsewhere. Fair? You are asking a smoker about 'fair'? Get real.
Can't happen? Well, take a look at this. Pretend the smoking ban wasn't just the start if you like. Accept control of the minutiae of your life if that's what you want.
But never, never ask the smokers to help you when it's your turn.
We're on our own. So are you.
Antismokers, Apple, CAMRA and the entire leisure industry don't want us to fight for them. So I won't.
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